Is there a book on restoring T3/T25's

[Wookster]

Hi Folks,

Like many on here I'm slowly getting rid of the rust on my old bus and learning loads in the process, as well as from other members experiences.

Seems like everyone has both common and different issues, rusty places where there is no logic behind it etc.
Occasionally whilst cutting out a rusty bit, I hit something more substantial behind it which I then have to repair.

Question is, does anyone know of a book or a diagram somewhere which might help to prevent this.

Cheers

Wookster

[boatbuilder]

Don't know of any books really, but theres a lot of info on the forum here about repairing almost every part of the van.
Hidden rust is a funny thing, often you can have a rust hole and 5mm away you can have perfect metal with the factory paint still on it.

There are a few reasons why this rust happens:
- VW only seam sealed one side of most of the seams, allowing water to get in from the other side and start rust. This is how 90% of the rust on a van starts. Also some metal was overlapped and seam sealed with no paint coating at all on the mating surfaces.(e.g. behind the slider middle rail)
- "Camper conversion" companies often made a dogs dinner out of the vans, for example drilling holes in the roof, not sealing things properly, not painting cut edges etc...all of which allowed water to get in and then find its way to the most unlikely of places where it sits, usually stuck between two closely overlapped panels where water was never anticipated to be... and rusts.
- any tiny imperfection in the paint has had 20+ years to break down and start a rust spot.
- the VW wax inside sills etc did a very good job. Just a pity they didn't use a bit more of it.
- all of which can be made worse by dodgy repairs over the years, filler over rust etc.

Preventing it from happening again... people differ on this. Here is what I have done..

- remove all of the rust, cutting out/blasting
- treat with vactan / acid just to make sure its all gone.
- weld in new metal, try to make sure there are no pinholes in your welds.
- paint repaired area with epoxy etch primer (I usually grit blast just before the primer)
- seam seal both sides of the repair.
- paint again.
- spray with wax in every nook and cranny (haven't done it yet but I intend to buy 5 litres of Dynax S50 and Dynax UB)

[Wookster]

Guess what you are saying is that rust problems are largely caused by poor build quality/procedures typical of the period. Never worked on a T4/T5 but hopefully they have been resolved, not seen many rusty ones to be fair but then again they aren't old yet.

Doing the best I can to keep the old tin worm away as I work along, and have accepted that jobs often take much longer than expected. Just glad I bought 3 sheets of steel before I took my old bus off the road, no way to fetch it now in decent lengths. Stuff I bought has a shiny galvanised surface and remains mint even after being out in all weathers for a couple of years. Brilliant stuff to use so long as you grind off where you are going to weld.
Zinc oxide fumes are definitely not pleasant.

Unlike yourself I don't have anywhere outside to grit blast so limited to seams.
Only have a small grit gun but it does the job, just messy. Got an idea for this though, if it works I'll post it up.

Will research the dynax products, only used waxoyl so far and it's not so cheap anymore.

Thanks for your reply

Wookster